Marx created a narrative. The Soviets perfected it. The West internalized it. It "explains" all evil in terms of either American or British empire-building. The only problem with it being it is a pack of lies from start to finish. This is where the history of the evolution of the free world can be honestly written.

"Our standing with Egyptians was better after the 9/11 attacks, but worsened after Iraq War, and it hit bottom after revelations about U.S. military behavior at the Abu Ghraib prison."

This actually surprised me. I wouldn't have thought Abu Ghraib would have even shown up on the radar. To me, complaints about Abu Ghraib seemed to be transparent propaganda, given that:

1. Where were these complaints when Saddam was doing far worse?2. Saddam was torturing innocents, not hazing a bunch of terrorists.3. Saddam actually ordered his genuine torture - the American president did no such thing.4. When the Americans found out about this illegal activity, they condemned it. I don't remember a single American making a comment like "I applaud the hazing of a bunch of terrorists actually and think we should have more of it".5. The perpetrators who broke US law were charged and jailed. Whether they got too little or too much punishment is an eternal debate. There's no nice and neat formula to ensure that punishment fits the crime. I would like to have given the death penalty to the Australians who "hazed" me at school, but Australian society generally considers a "stern talk" or "a talk" or "nothing" is a suitable response to that.

But assuming the polls are correct, this is people who weren't anti-American suddenly becoming anti-American not because of the Iraq war itself, but because they have conflated a bunch of US soldiers doing something wrong with "the US government". Nobody said US soldiers were perfect. Once "grossly imperfect" ones are found they are appropriately dismissed and jailed. This isn't something unique to the military. In all walks of life you can get sacked for violating company rules or whatever.

You don't judge McDonalds hamburgers just because you know one employee who is an arsehole, do you? Arseholes are everywhere. Do you assume that all Egyptians are bad just because one Egyptian mugged you? Another Egyptian would have protected you! You can't write off all of Egypt like that! And I'm sure these Egyptians who just "changed their vote" because of Abu Ghraib would understand that about events in their own country and wouldn't start calling their parents arseholes because some stranger stole their wallet.

Even if we can't do anything about the innately anti-American Egyptians, we should be able to reason with those who aren't innate arseholes. Maybe they simply got dishonest "news" delivered to them that Bush had ordered it and weren't aware of that whole "charge and jail" thing? I don't know. There's too many people following too many bizarre trains of logic for me to properly abstract them. I can however do my best to point out a chain that is based on the scientific method at every point. Will it make a difference to the Egyptian elections? Probably not. There's most likely nothing that can be done to prevent Ayatollah Arafat rising to power. But at least I can say I gave it my best shot. If everyone else was giving their best shot, we could probably collapse the whole disgusting and deceitful anti-American worldview.